Henry Paulson was Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, 74th US
Treasury Secretary, and a member of the International Monetary Fund Board of
Governors. Currently, Tim Geithner is
Treasury Secretary, and in case you didn't know, Geither and Ben Bernanke are
IMF BOG members. Paulson himself was
recruited by a former Goldman Sachs banker, former White House Chief of Staff
Josh Bolten. Paulson surrounded himself
at Treasury with people he was comfortable with, and he was comfortable with
people from Goldman Sachs: Neel Kashkari, Dan Jester, Steve Shafran, Robert Steel,
etc. Small world isn't it?

Robert Rubin worked 26 years at Goldman Sachs, was Vice
Chairman and Co-Chief Operating Officer (1987-1990), Co-Chairman and Co-Senior
Partner (1990-1992), was 71st US Treasury Secretary, and during eight years post-Government
work at Citigroup, including a month-long stint as Chairman in 2007, he received
more than $126 million in cash and stock.

Paulson, Rubin, and current Treasury Secretary Geithner were
knee
deep in recent Government efforts to bailout Citigroup. In the Citigroup bailout, announced late on a
Sunday night, November 23, 2008,
the Government indemnified the bank against potential losses on $306 billion in
toxic assets. The bailout came days after Paulson made comments suggesting he
would leave any future bailouts to the Obama administration. Tim Geithner, Citigroup's lead regulator,
only withdrew from direct involvement with Rubin, Citigroup leaders, and the bailout
planning after his name was leaked as Obama's nominee for Treasury Secretary. But, Citigroup's stock plunged the week
before, and Rubin called Paulson to say the Government had to do
something. On Monday morning after the
bailout announcement, Citigroup's stock soared.

The rule there was typical of every aspect of this financial
crisis. The people who caused the crisis
remained in charge and shielded from financial harm. If it was illegal, it would clearly be a
conspiracy, but since our system allows such odious conduct, it is more
accurate to describe it as oligarchy or fascism, both of which are abhorrent to
the American way of thinking about our political traditions, but neither of
which are illegal.

Here is another familiar face, Laurence Summers.

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Summers was 71st US
Secretary Treasury. He made $2.7 million
in speaking fees from the likes of Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, on top of his
2008 salary of $5.2
million, for his one-day-a-week job with hedge fund, D. E. Shaw. According to the NY Times,
"The reporter Louise Story wrote that
Summers had done consulting work for another hedge fund, Taconic Capital
Advisors, from 2004 to 2006, while still president of Harvard." He is now Director of the White House's National Economic Council and President
Obama's chief economic adviser.

Not everyone worked or works for Goldman Sachs. Who have we here?

Our current US Treasury Secretary and current US
member of the IMF Board of Governors, Tim Geithner, and former US Treasury
Secretary and alternate member of the IMF Board of Governors, Ben Bernanke, are
not Goldman alumni. At least, THEY are not
directly beholden to Goldman Sachs. But,
where do they stand in the whole money-power picture? A little over a year ago, A.
James Memmott wrote:

"He's
[Geithner] now an insider himself, knee deep in the unfolding economic crisis,
who has worked closely with former New York Fed chief Gerald Corrigan, former
U.S. Fed chief Alan Greenspan and current Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and
head of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke.

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Geithner's first
job was with Kissinger Associates,
where he worked with the former secretary of state. From there, he went to the U.S. Treasury
Department, where he rose to become an aide to Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin, treasury secretaries under Bill Clinton. He assisted these leaders in putting together
bailouts, not of companies but of nations, including Mexico and Indonesia.

During the
late 1990s, then the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan also noticed
Geithner. "That whole period was
one long crisis," Greenspan told Portfolio. "(Geithner showed) a general
understanding of the nature of what the problems were and what was required to
right the system."

Geithner's
circle of advisers and mentors was expanded in 2003 when he became head of the New York Fed, the most
powerful of the government's 12 regional banks.
When Bear Stearns, an investment bank, began to bleed money earlier this
year as a result of the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage industry, the New
York Fed took on damage-control duties.